Body of a recent email forward going around:

According to The Book of Revelations the anti-christ is:

The anti-christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal….the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything. Is this anti-christ,………. OBAMA??

Seriously? Seriously. Real sophisticated (not to mention nonexistent) quote from the book of revelationS. It’s especially sad that I received this email from an actual purported bible-believing family member.

I do also have to credit Jared for his great commentary on this particular email:

The most intriguing part of this, aside from Caesar Nero having already been the elusive 666 figure during the 1st century, is that it claims the antichrist is prophesied to be of “Muslim descent.” Muhammad penned the Quran in the 7th century, over 500 years after the New Testament was complete. Strange that the New Testament was talking about Muslims before they existed.

Seriously, though, do I look 17 years old? I guess that’s a good thing. They took a whole 10 years off my age.

10        Eastern Promises
9          After the Wedding (Efter brylluppet… Swedish film released in 2006)
8          Atonement
7          There Will be Blood
6          No Country for Old Men
5          Everything will be OK (a 19-minute short film)
4          Once
3          Waitress
2          Little Children (released in 2006)
1          The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (French film… La scaphandre et le papillon)

2007 Honorable Mentions:
the Orphanage
Juno
Black Book
Darjeeling Ltd
Dan in Real Life
Sicko
Paris je t’aime

Films released in 2007 that I haven’t seen yet and want to see… perhaps some will be on my best of 2008 list:
michael clayton
lookout
american gangster
gone baby gone
into the wild
before the devil knows you’re dead
sweeney todd
savages
I’m not there
4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days
charlie wilson’s war
enchanted
things we lost in the fire
lust, caution
assassination of jesse james…

I also saw a few crappy movies in 2007 that I had hoped would be good. For example:
the Mist… Worst. CGI. Ever… Darkest. Ending. Ever… (besides Dogville)
l’enfant
Half Nelson… I expected and wanted this to be good but it bored the crap out of me

So did I miss anything? Agree? Disagree?

But I saw the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in Norman on Friday night… Jared and I both saw “guy with mental illness riding a bike WHILE playing a harmonica.” It was the coolest thing ever. We were in my mom’s convertible at the time, so we even heard the harmonica. He was playing it with both hands while apparently riding his bike for transportation. It was great. Norman has reached a new level of awesomeness.

And that’s what makes Norman so much cooler than Edmond.

My cousin Evan is back in the U S and A. He’s a marine and he’s been stationed in Iraq since April… now he’s back stateside for awhile, until January we hear. Even though I have never lived in the same state as Evan, and I have only seen him a few times a year for my entire life, of course I’m glad that he’s home safely. He’s a great cousin, a super fun-guy (ha ha), and I can’t wait to see him at Thanksgiving.

His mom and stepdad (my aunt and uncle) flew to from KY to CA to see him the second he landed safely today. They’ve been on a voluntary beer fast the whole time he’s been gone (in support of Evan not being able to drink while in Iraq), and I’m sure the 3 of them will be reacquainting themselves with ye olde ale and lager tonight. I hear he’s really skinny now. Apparently mess hall food in Iraq isn’t the most delicious food in the world.

That’s about it. I’m just happy he’s back safe.

Also, our dogs have never had a flea problem… but in the past month they’ve had fleas crawling all over them. It’s disgusting. I’ve given both of them multiple flea baths, but you’re only supposed to do that about once every 2 weeks, and the fleas always come back within a few days. I put some frontline on both of them last night, and as of right now, the fleas are still there. They’re all supposed to be dead within 24 hours of application, so if I still see any fleas by 9:00 pm tonight, I’m demanding a refund!

Norman is a zoo now, apparently.

In other news, law school sucks and I miss my husband. He feels the same way.

We had our entire house recarpeted on Monday. Our dogs stayed at my parents’ house in Edmond for a few days while we moved furniture around and had the carpet put in. Last night Jared and I went to Edmond to pick up our dogs (who were THRILLED to see us, by the way). Once we got them home, we were concerned about them “marking their territory” on the new carpet because the guy who installed our carpet said that even the best trained dogs usually do pee on new carpet as soon as it’s put in. Our little dogs were so good and have not peed on the new carpet yet as far as we can tell.

An hour after we brought the dogs home last night we were laying in bed about to go to sleep (with the door closed and the dogs in the living room), when we noticed a terrible smell. We went out to investigate and immediately discovered that Pinto got skunked AGAIN… then came inside and walked around and rubbed himself on the brand new carpet.
Poor Pinto and Elmer had to be subjected once again to the discomfort of a peroxide and baking soda bath. The dogs don’t smell like skunk anymore, but our new carpet still does. I sprayed febreeze on it, but I’m sure it will be a few days before the smell fades entirely away.

Happy frolicking or not, I’m thinking that two spraying incidents in a year is two too many. I am now almost mentally prepared for an all out skunk massacre, babies and all.

My vote is still to let the skunks live. Unlike some of my friends who have no moral qualms about shooting armadillos multiple times (then laughing about it), I don’t feel right about calling the city to kill the skunks. The probability of one of them spraying Pinto or Elmer again is low (ok, it’s actually moderate to low), and now I know what to do if it happens again. Perhaps I should check into to the possibility of a “no-kill” pest removal service as a friend suggested, but I highly doubt that such a thing exists for skunk removal.

I’m torn… do I want my neighborhood rid of skunks (and the resulting skunklets), or do I want to run the risk of myself or one of my dogs getting sprayed (again and again)??? Not to mention that according to my vet, skunks are the 1 transmitter of rabies (to dogs) in Oklahoma. He told me in no uncertain terms that if you see a skunk walking around in the daytime, it has rabies. Seeing a skunk at night is unnerving, but at least the worst thing that could happen is you get sprayed and smell terrible for a week.

Who am I to play God, right? The only thing the skunklets have done wrong is to be born smelly, and into a modern world unfriendly to skunks. I would call the city to “get rid” of them, but I know that means certain death for the poor skunklets. People keep (de-scented) skunks as pets, apparently they’re intelligent and sweet little animals if they grow up with humans. Why did these poor little skunklets in my neighborhood have the misfortune of being hated and despised, while I sit with a sweet little loved doglet on my lap (who also happens to be really smelly right now)?

I know we live in a fallen world, but I will always have a slight revulsion to eating any kind of meat. The thought of a slaughterhouse makes me sad, and it doesn’t help much even if it’s as cruelty free as possible (though that does help a lot). The principle is still the same. It really bothers me that conscious beings have to die so I can live. I have moral qualms about killing “pests” in or around my house, even if they’re mice **shudder** or spiders. I know there’s “natural evil” in the world, animals eat other animals in the wild, but something inside me still cries out injustice. The only hope I have is that someday it will all be made right.

I could definitely write a massive blog just on this subject, but the skunk issue remains. As a recap, here’s what I learned from Pinto’s traumatic skunk experience a few months back……. baking soda, peroxide, and dish soap can take that skunk smell right off a dog. Remeber that, and you’ll be fine.

• OK is 44th in the nation in life expectancy according to a recent study by online science journal PLoS Medicine (or 49th depending on who you ask. My contact at work actually stated that we are currently either 49th or 50th)

• Our overall life expectancy is actually declining in OK, which puts us in a progressively worse condition than 3rd world countries (whose people don’t live as long as us overall, but are experiencing an increase in their life expectancies)

Now, I understand that someone has to be last, so why shouldn’t it be us? The disparity between #1 Hawaii, and #50 Mississippi (according to PLoS) is 6.4 years with Hawaii at 80.0 years and MS at 73.6… 6.4 years is a lotta life, don’t you think?

It becomes even more interesting when you compare the life expectancy of people in the U.S. to those of other countries. In the world, we rank 45th out of 221 countries, below most of Europe, Israel, Puerto Rico, Guam, etc…

Why? Well, of course we’re fat, lazy, etc… but really, our health care system in the U.S. sucks. It’s based on profit. Should that be the way we care for people… out of a motive of profit? Should we put effort into developing new drugs and medical advances solely for profit? (Extreme free-market Libertarians say yes. This is one reason I am not one). Of course, we need to pay doctors decently as incentive for them to put so much effort and study into their work, but do we really need to pay pharmacists $90k/year right out of school?!?! Do antiretroviral drugs (AIDS-treatment drugs) for one person really cost $7000/year, or is that the pharmaceutical equivalent of gasoline price-gouging? That’s what they cost in 1996. Do the math yourself. Should the drug companies be allowed to charge so much?!?! Do we really want to put our lives in the hands of insurance companies who can essentially determine a person’s life or death based on what they’re willing to pay for? People die all the time because their insurance company refuses to pay for treatment that could have likely saved their lives, and that they could not afford on their own.

I watched most of the documentary Sicko online a few days ago (I would post the link but I think the studio made the site take it down b/c it’s not working now). I agree with most everything in the film, and my husband is much more passionate about the issues covered than even I am. Truth is truth, regardless of who speaks it, so don’t let the director’s ridiculousness and past spinning of the truth discourage you from seeing it.

I need to stop now because I’m about to go on a massive rant about pseudoscience, which was not my intention in writing this blog and has absolutely nothing to do with the movie Sicko or the statistics I learned today. That is a completely different issue for a different day (admittedly a different day when I’m in the mood for unending hours of tedious typing, debate, and hatred from some of my closest friends and family). Something has to change in the way the United States manages its healthcare. Maybe not socialized medicine (or maybe so), but definitely something.